“Stop gap” budget passed; much more work must be done

On June 30th, the Legislature passed and Governor Rauner signed a so-called “stop gap” budget: Public Act 99-0524. This budget covers an 18-month period from July 1, 2015 through December 31, 2016. This is the first actual budget enacted to cover Fiscal Year 2016 which ended on the day the budget was enacted. The good news is that this budget should enable some mental health and other human services providers to receive payment for services that they have already provided. However, this does not include some mental health services which were in the Fiscal Year 2015 budget and which providers continued to offer to persons with mental illnesses in the hope that they would eventually be reimbursed. This further harms many behavioral health care providers whose financial condition is precarious. Click here for a link to some of the cuts to human services providers across Illinois.

Worse still is the fact that Public Act 99-0524 does not contain any new revenue. This means that every day Illinois’ multi-billion dollar deficit is growing worse. The budget continues the practice we have had for the past year of spending more money than we are taking in. This reality has many causes. However, one of the most important was allowing the state income tax rate to be cut by one third on January 1, 2015. Because our deficit is getting worse every day, every day it becomes harder for us to solve this problem. That is because eventually we will need to balance the budget and pay back all of the money we have borrowed. That means that the amount of new revenue and/or cuts to vital services that will be be needed increases every day. It is very important that mental health advocates continue to communicate to Governor Rauner, to our state senators and to our state representatives that we need more revenue and we need it as soon as possible.